Peter Miller, art historian, will arrange a private viewing of the Guston show he's curated in Rome, for our participants on the Rome program. It is a great chance to see the important transitional paintings of a great american artist.

The American Academy has invited our participants for a special tour of the Academy when they're in Rome on our program. On the way up to theAcademy there is the majestic fountain of the Acqua Paola, built in 1612 by Pope Paul V. The Academy occupies ten buildings and eleven acres of gardens atop the Janiculum, the highest hill within the walls of Rome. The gardens and views truly capture the imagination.

Mark Pulsford, faculty, worked on this drawing on-site at the Palatine in the Forum in Rome. This area was where the ancient Roman Civilization developed. One has to walk through the Forum, filled with it's immaculate history, and climb to the top Palatine hill to reach this amazing building. The hike is worth it because it also offer breath taking views of Rome and a marvelous one of the Colosseum.

This drawing Daniel, faculty, did once he arrived back from the program last year. The source material was from several drawings and pictures of different vistas of Rome. He also incorporates some of the visual elements that he experienced while visiting museums in Rome and walking around Pompeii. He learned a great number of the frescoes create a sense of theatre. Since many of rooms had few to no windows, keeps the residence cool, the frescoes added an element of space and theatrics. Here he added a stage and top beam to compress the image, creating a focus to the central image.

Daniel Abrams' experience in Pompeii

This sketch our faculty member, Daniel Abrams, completed while with the participants in Pompeii. He was amazed by the complexity of the structures and the breath-taking beauty of the surrounding mountains. The experience of being able to draw in Pompeii and see the immense amount of artwork including the Villa of Mysteries has had a profound affect on his artwork. Everywhere he went through-out the city he found different elements which he wanted to capture. This has led Daniel to create pieces which are inspired by pre-renaissance, single ground plane/multiple perspective, description of space instead of a modern single-perspective space. He is looking forward to taking future participants to Pompeii and discussing compelling elements of drawing.

One of the beautiful things about creating artwork in Rome is the ability to bring home all of the pieces to your studio and see what the pieces can develop into. Here is a piece that one of our participants created last year. One of the reason this piece catches my eye is the endless possibilities that it opens. It is a great study that can be taken into the studio and be used as information for many future paintings.